Thursday, September 20, 2012

How Haj Amin al-Husseini forced Jews from Iraq

With apologists for the Palestinians busy denying the role and importance of the pro-Nazi Haj Amin al-Husseini in setting off the pogrom in Iraq known as the Farhud, it is as well to remind us that some brave Arabs are prepared to tell the truth. See this MEMRI clip made in 2009.

Dr. Rashid Al-Khayoun:
When you meet an Iraqi Jew today on the streets of Europe or elsewhere,
he remembers his co-existence with his Muslim or Christian neighbor.

Interviewer:
When did the Iraqi Jews begin to lose that sense of security and tolerance?

Dr. Rashid Al-Khayoun:
When pan-Arab nationalism grew stronger in Iraq, from the late 1940's
to the early 1950's. The Jew began to be the target of deliberate affronts.
Iraqi Jews are known for their patriotism. They have nothing to do with
Israel. The issue of Israel and Zionism...

Interviewer:
But many of the Jews moved to Israel.

Dr. Rashid Al-Khayoun:
They were coerced to move.

Interviewer: Who
forced them?

Dr. Rashid Al-Khayoun:
The wave of pan-Arab nationalism within Iraq.

Interviewer: So
they thought that Israel would be better for them than Iraq?

Dr. Rashid Al-Khayoun:
They did not go [straight] to Israel. First, they went to European countries,
to Iran... They tried to find an interim region from where they could
later return to Iraq. You shouldn't be surprised if I told you that
the first to study [the possibility] of expelling the Jews from Iraq
was the so-called Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin Al-Husseini.

Dr. Rashid Al-Khayoun:
Yes, Amin Al-Husseini played a significant role, along with German Nazism,
in dragging the Jews out of Iraq.

Interviewer: How?

Dr. Rashid Al-Khayoun:
In the days of the "Farhoud" pogroms, at the end of May and
the beginning of June 1941 – which was called the revolution of Rashid
Ali Al-Kilani... This is well known. The "heroes" of the Farhoud
were Amin Al-Husseini, and some Syrian and Palestinian teachers. I am
not accusing these people of collaborating with Israel, but I am accusing
them of political stupidity.

5 comments:

It's what we would expect to be sure. Unfortunately paywall. Maybe you can get the full article which I didn't read because I wouldn't give HaArets even one agora. But what he writes at the beginning is enough.

The role of Syrian and "palestinian" teachers and of the Mufti Husseini was mentioned in an Iraqi govt commission report investigating the causes of the Farhud. It is quoted in one of Norman Stillman's collections of documents on the history of Jews in Arab lands in modern times.

btw, did you see that dumb comment by talknic the other day? He claimed that Husseini wasn't really the leader of the Palestinian Arabs. He was not elected by them but was recognized as the chief leader of those Arabs even by those who opposed him.

"from Bagdad to Jaffa". Gideon Levy is the same half-brained racist who can never get but half the picture.

Another half-brained racist was buried today, amid laments by his family and the few friends he had left that no politicians or other personalities, not even the President has come to pay his respects.

That's Haim Hefer, a much celebrated Israeli poet and musician who fought in Israel's early wars.

But he was a racist. Like Gideon Levy, he couldn't help it. And the politicians that should have visited him made their choice between honoring a national poet,one of their own, or honoring the large reserve of votes of the group that he has offended.

"Still, the crux of the matter is a question of principle which was well stated by MK Ahmed Tibi. "How many homelands do you have?" he asked Ayalon on television, and his question still hangs in the air. Is Israel the homeland, or is it Iraq? The Hebrew struggles to put the word "homeland" in the plural. If Israel wants justice for refugees, let us give justice to them all, to all the refugees of this horrible conflict, from Baghdad to Jaffa. Until then, it would be best to concentrate on ending the suffering of those who continue to be the victims of policies that began in 1948 and have not ceased for a moment since."

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Introduction

In just 50 years, almost a million Jews, whose communities stretch back up to 3,000 years, have been 'ethnically cleansed' from 10 Arab countries. These refugees outnumber the Palestinian refugees two to one, but their narrative has all but been ignored. Unlike Palestinian refugees, they fled not war, but systematic persecution. Seen in this light, Israel, where some 50 percent of the Jewish population descend from these refugees and are now full citizens, is the legitimate expression of the self-determination of an oppressed indigenous, Middle Eastern people.This website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, which can never return to what and where they once were - even if they wanted to. It will attempt to pass on the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution. Awareness of the injustice done to these Jews can only advance the cause of peace and reconciliation.(Iran: once an ally of Israel, the Islamic Republic of Iran is now an implacable enemy and numbers of Iranian Jews have fallen drastically from 80,000 to 20,000 since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Their plight - and that of all other communities threatened by Islamism - does therefore fall within the scope of this blog.)